Egg Box Count and Sort!

This is the kind of fun that keeps Cakie absorbed for ages because it combines some of her favourite things in the world: containers and little things to put inside them!

We had a huge egg box and so I numbered the little holes from 1-15 with a Sharpie marker in alternating colours.

I gave her our new box of sorting and threading beads that we bought at the weekend (from Melissa and Doug- I love their things!) and she was away!

Lining them up and making sure they all “fitted” in.

And she instantly counted as she put them into the holes. She added them in no particular order and didn’t count the correct numbers for each hole. But she did get very excited when she saw number 2 “it’s number 2!” and pointed it out for me to see.

This stage is all about enriching their environment with numbers and letters and making them part of every day play and role play. She loves to look at them and talk about them.

There was quite a lot of talk about shapes and colours too and things that were “too big” and “not fitted in dere”, especially when she tried to cram the whole lot in and shut the box for a “shake it up”.

And in wonderful toddler fashion, the beads started to talk to each other too. Their conversation typically went something like this “hello dere, oh hello dere, oh hello!”

This activity is good for:* hand to eye co-ordination* fine motor skills* counting and recognising numbers* talking about the names and properties of shapes

* Sorting by colour, size and shape* awareness of space and manipulating objects to “fit”

These are the beads that we bought:

You could of course use buttons, jam jar lids, large pasta shapes, cotton reels, plastic coins, counters or other small countables.

What a great idea for how to use those block beads and an egg carton. We have both! I love the idea of having numbers written out to keep in front of them during play. My J is starting to count past 10 and this would be great and fun way to keep that learning going.